He's Having a Laugh ; Talking to Ricky Gervais has Been Likened to Coaxing a Polecat From Beneath the Sofa. Not Last Weekend It Wasn't: He Gave Us a Riotous Account of How He Went From Eating Beans On Shredded Wheat to Building a Fortune - and the Implications It's Had for Buying Underpants...

Summary

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Ricky Gervais's laugh is truly a thing of wonder. Outside the temperature is below freezing. Somehow, the interior of Gervais's Hampstead office manages to be even colder. At times it feels as if the only source of warmth in the room is Gervais's extraordinary cackle.

Gervais is famous for a lot of things but that laugh is right up there. It is so popular that it has inspired numerous websites in exalted tribute. A ten-minute YouTube montage of Gervais laughter has clocked up millions of hits.

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Extract

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He's Having a Laugh ; Talking to Ricky Gervais has Been Likened to Coaxing a Polecat From Beneath the Sofa. Not Last Weekend It Wasn't: He Gave Us a Riotous Account of How He Went From Eating Beans On Shredded Wheat to Building a Fortune - and the Implications It's Had for Buying Underpants...

Even when he's only mildly amused, it sounds like three men laughing at once. When he finds something downright hilarious, the laugh sounds like a cross between a pack of mating hyenas and the noise you might hear echoing around the corridors of a 19thcentury lunatic asylum; and it's no more evident than when he's reflecting on one of the bleakest chapters of his student days. 'I was down to my last 50p,' he tells me, 'the last remnants of my student grant. The water meter in my flat had reached zero and I had no clean clothes to wear. Also, I needed a wash. So I decided to wash myself and my clothes at the same time. But I had a dilemma. Do I put the shirts in with me and use the last bit of shamp...

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